monsters

The following was inspired by the prompt, Lonely Monsters, and is by Writers in the Grove member, Kirsten Baggins.

The ice cream drips down onto the pavement, but he doesn’t seem to mind as he laps at the scoops, a big happy smile on his face as he looks up at the sky, smiling at the sun I’ve had to teach him not to stare at it specifically, but he stills likes to look up and bask in its warmth. Heat seems so foreign to him, what with him being so cold and undead.

With his free hand, he picks me up and places me on his shoulder, careful not to make me spill my own treat, before we head down the city sidewalk. On a nearby corner, a man is strumming away at his guitar for tips, and my friend approaches, bobbing his head cheerfully to the tune-music always gets his attention, and he’ll follow it wherever it goes. The guitarist freezes upon seeing his audience, stopping his playing with fear, only for my friend to say, “Play.”

“What do we say?” I ask.

“Please.”

The guitarist nervously continues, while I fish out some bills for my friend to put in the guitar case. He makes a happy sound when he does, saying to the performer, ‘Music good.’ The man merely gives a nervous smile and nods in agreement, and I smile to him as he keeps playing, and we move down the sidewalk.

As we continue down the street, I ask from my perch, “Do you want to go to the bookstore?”

Reading is a great joy for my friend – he can’t quite do it himself yet, so in my teaching him to talk, I teach him to read as well. He’s yet to meet a book he doesn’t like: Fairy tales, short stories, poems, any genre, all of them he’s loved very, very much

Monsters are inherently lonely characters, often seeking out some form of friendship, only to be rejected, mostly on the basis on their appearance. It’s the part about them that touches our hearts, and makes us feel for them, seeing them without a companion, and with that, I ask this: If you were friends with a monster, what would you do with them? How would you spend your day with them? It could be any monster of your choosing-the monster in your closet or beneath your bed, a werewolf, a vampire, a reanimated corpse, a mummy, a ghost, anything at all! Just what would you do with your monstrous friend?

His friend said kindly, “Why don’t you take a vacation, some place quiet.”
So he did. He went hunting. A walk in the woods would be just the place.
He was going along when all of a sudden a giant jumped out in front of him.
The hunter quickly bellowed like a mating alligator, a terrible sound.
The sound scared the giant so bad he flew up into the nearest tree.
There, sitting on a limb sat a real live dinosaur eating a kumquat.
The giant scared the dinosaur so bad he dropped his kumquat.
It hit the hunter on the head knocking him out cold.
The giant jumped down from the tree, grabbed the kumquat for his breakfast and ran away.
Just as the hunter was coming around, the dinosaur jumped down from the tree,
grabbed the hunters red hat, (his ears were cold), and took off after his kumquat.
The terrified hunter immediately called a policeman
reporting there was a giant running loose in the woods
who could turn himself into a dinosaur! He’d seen it himself!
They could spot him because this dinosaur was wearing a red hat!
Policeman kindly said, “Why don’t you take a vacation friend, some place quiet.”